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Saturday, January 14, 2012

Alpha 7 Release!

Oui monsieur.

Check le download page et report le bugs.

ALPHA 7 CHANGES
---------------

Lots of new stuff most notably : Game modes with Infection and Corpses.

FIXED BUGS
- (n/a)

NEW GAMEPLAY - GAME MODES
- When starting a new game you choose a game mode...
- STD - Standard - the standard game like in previous versions
recap:
- evolution.
- different types of zombies.
- instant zombification.
- C&I - Corpses & Infection
- disabled instant zombification.
- livings are infected by some undead bites (the ones who regain their hp when they hit you). see below for details on infection.
- when a living dies it becomes a corpse. see below for details on corpses.
- there are still evolution and different types of zombies, if you want to be more hardcore, see VTG.
- VTG - Vintage - the must for hardcore classic zombies fans
- all the features of C&I.
- no different types of zombies, only zombified man and woman.
- no zombie evolution.
- In vintage you can still start the game as another type of zombie if you want.
- Special case for the player : will immediatly turn into a zombie if dying infected (no corpse).

NEW GAMEPLAY - INFECTION (if game mode has it)
- Infection rated as % of actor resistance to infection.
- Resistance to infection = infection "hitpoints" = actor max Hitpoints + max Stamina.
- As infection % increase there are ill effects.
- 100% or more infection can trigger death.
- Does not increase or decrease by itself over time : heal with meds, worsen with bites.

NEW GAMEPLAY - CORPSES (if game mode has them)
- A corpse will slowly decay to finally turn into dust and disapear.
- A corpse might raise to become a zombie, with a delay of 6 hours (the infection takes some time to revive the dead).
- Chances to raise depends on a number of factors :
- the time since death.
- the infection level of the living who died.
- corpses are much more likely to raise at night.
- Explosions (grenades) damage corpses.
- I'm sure you guys will find all kinds of funny exploits/bugs with corpses ^^

ACTIONS
- New Action: Drag Corpse.
- move a corpse with you.
- slows you down and is a tiring action.
- New Action: Butcher Corpse (living)
- inflict damage to the corpse to accelerate the decay and eventually destroy it.
- New Action: Eat Corpse (undead)
- inflict damage to the corpse and regen hp.

SKILLS
- New Skill : Necrology
- damage bonus vs undeads and corpses when butchering them.
- examining corpses will give you more info :
at level 1 = estimation of date of death.
at level 3 = estimation of infection.
at level 5 = estimation of chances to rise as a zombie.

FACTIONS
- new Gangs: There are now 2 gangs of Bikers & 2 gangs of Gangsta.
Each gang is an enemy of the other one and they will fight each other.

ACTORS
- Zombifieds: with the AGILE skill can jump like the ZM does.
- Zombifieds: with the STRONG skill can push like the ZM does.
- Zombifieds: keep half of their past life skills (previously was only 1 skill at level 1).
- Zombifieds: spawned zombifieds (invasion) start with some random skills, half of what a living would get.
- Undeads: undeads gain a skill every two nights (night 1, 3...) from a limited set.
- Each unique survivor has a unique weapon.

ITEMS
- New Armors: The 2 biker gangs have a different jacket with different stats; Police Riot armor.
- New Light: Big Flashlight -for a lack of a better name- FoV+2 but spent fast.
- New Med: Antiviral pills in Hospital & CUF.
- Medkit heal a bit of infection.
- Grenade deals more damage.
- New unique weapons for BB, SM and RJ.

EVENTS
- Gangs: smaller squads but a bit more likely to come (to take advantage of the rival gangs feature)

AI
- Zombies & Rats eat corpses.
- Livings AIs use meds to cure their infection when appropriate.
- All Undeads AIs will push objects around if they are able to.
- Hungry angry civilians will push all kinds of objects around (tables...).

POST-MORTEM
- Removed useless "The weather stayed XXX" entries.

GFX
- New gfx for different stages of rotting corpses (flies).
Note to modders:
- the gfx has 2 frames for each 5 stages of rot and moves by +-2 pixels.
- the corpses are rotated and scaled gfxs of actors.

SFX
- Sfx when a corpse rise.
- Sfw when an undead eat a corpse.

PERFORMANCE
- Dead undeads(sic) don't drop remains gfx anymore, while it was nice it made saved game unecessary larger as days passed.
Blood is still in though cause it's fun and be useful to the player.

My god VTG mode is exactly what I have been wanting for so long. It's incredibly fun with 200 zombies running rampant, all of them from day 0.

There are a few problems with the new corpse and undead level up systems that I'd like to see modified a bit.

First, corpses never get the chance to come back as zombies. No zombie in the entire game that I've seen came back, they were always eaten by hungry zombies. Perhaps there could be a new "oldness" vs "meat left" system. If the infection is too low it simply won't transform before it becomes dust. The meat left system makes it so that bodies cannot be destroyed by zombies.

Speaking of that, zombies in VTG mode are incredibly deadly. I understand that it's every OTHER night that they become stronger, but they never stop becoming stronger until all of them have greater power to that of a zombie master! What I suggest is that zombies do not get a power after 10 days (either pushing/jumping). After that it is simply health up to a max of level 3. Currently 200 of these guys with greater than zombie master prowess is almost impossible to survive from, let alone seeing a survivor live for more than an hour.

Your game is a great work, RoguedJack! I fell in love with your game almost at the first glance (i haven't seen such cool atmosphere in any other roguelikes), and I like how fast you are adding new features. I'm really happy that such a good game is being developed. Keep going, I wish you luck and success : )

would be nice if there wasn't walls of zombies in every district you weren't in, since right now after a few days literally all the districts get completely overrun with zombies and it makes it impossible to leave your district reliably unless you get really lucky and a national guard arrives just as you arrive and you can seek cover in it. Otherwise it seems you just get swamped by 20+ zombies that all have ridiculous skills due to the undead upgrading system...

Well guys, i dont know what it was - bug or something else but i absolutely sure in what i saw. I reincarnated as cop with default follower with gun. Then we went to office. Inside CHAR office we met guard who doesnt care about us, although we were near him. My follower didnt attack him, btw. Will try repeat it in next game.

The police man recongnized me as murder!!!@Anonymous, and when you play as cop you can see who is murder and how much murders he commited, and what is cool that is you can kill him without punishment.

@anon 09:22 you probably either set options for a large city and the computer runs out of memory when loading/saving (sounds silly but C# eats a lot of memory when deserializing) OR can't write to the save folder for some reason.

* * *

- I'll add an option to select zombie upgrades days.- I'll look into adding a self-defence mechanism (it's not as straightforward as it sounds).

This game is great!Why don't you add an item (kerosene?) to burn corpses instead of butchering them? It will fit perfectly in the genre :) and it could lead to other gameplay opportunities.. just my two cents. Anyway the game is already great as it is.

Hey, so I've been playing a Jason on vanilla for kicks and I've noticed something: when you enter the underground Char facility, all of the zombies are Disciples. I tried running or taking them on and I always die. Regular zombie hordes are challenging but evolved zombies are pretty much game over.

Re: Zombie skillsMaybe it could be an option determining: 1. How often the zombies get their skills, 2. What skill level they get capped out at, and 3. When the ability some skills grants the zombie actually takes effect.

So you could set it to be:- Zombies get their skill (Every 0/1/2/3/4/5/6/7 days) Zero disables new skill gains, and 7 is rediculously slow; as slow as the achievements you get.- Zombies skill capped at (0/1/2/3/4/5) If a zombie skill is higher then this then it is reduced to this. (zombies can lose all skills they previously had)- Zombie skill ability occurs at (5/4/3/2/1/0) Skill abilities like climbing on cars 'turns on' at this skill level (0 is always enabled all abilities; SUPER DIFFICULT)

Re: Skills in generalIt'd be nice if they'd scale with the days gone by. I still can't believe a survivor refugee on day 10 only has 1-2 total skill levels; they should have a total of 10 skill points. Maybe this could be an option, too...

is it possible in the current engine to include damage and accuracy range variation for guns?

For example, shotguns should make huge damage from 1 til, but should be extremely innacurate from far, the opposing happening with rifles, wich should have the best accuracy at long or medium range (because of scopes) innacurate from 3 or 3 tiles and be almost impossible to use from 1 tile?

Something I may recommend is to not allow zombies to pull stuff. Pushing forward is fine, since zombies are pretty dumb but right now there is no way to protect your hideout from a zombie horde since they randomly go around pushing/pulling cars (and they also seem to attack objects if there are no other targets nearby). Also, certain skills for zombies do not really make sense. Like martial arts, medic, firearms, etc.

Hi Jack and everybody. Am I the only one who feels that gangs are a little bit overpowered? I don't know how many games I have lost because of those gangs. They are damn quick, it's really difficult to escape from them. Maybe it's just me, but who knows.

I am not sure if this is deliberately programmed but... MAN, have you checked the ZOMBIE RATS SKILLS after a few weeks? They become 5-STRONG 5-AGILE 5-THOUGH 5-MARTIAL ARTS monsters, ultra-fast, that can kill you in 2 turns unless you kill them at distance! I suggest to re-balance the matter, unless super-rats was the original idea!